A request to cat owners

[watervole]

 We've blackbirds nesting in our garden.  I look on them as welcome guests and hope that they will successfully rear their family.  I see them regularly visiting the nest with beaks full of worms, carefully checking all round the garden before they fly into the nest.

Henry woke up last night to the sound of blackbird alarm calls, so loud that they got him out of bed and into the garden.  He scared away three cats.

Please, for the duration of the nesting season, keep your cats indoors overnight.

They're beautiful animals, but they're natural hunters.  

I have a split personality when it comes to cats.

When I'm strolling along the road, I stop and pass the time of day with cats that come and introduce themselves and ask me to stroke them.

When I'm in my back garden, I hiss at them and demand that they leave.

Please, just for the nesting season, buy a litter tray and give the birds a chance.  I've been there when a cat has got the nestlings and it's heartbreaking.

Comments

[lil_shepherd]

Yet, you know, the individual animal in our house who has killed most birds is our terrier, Draco.

[watervole]

Makes sense, I guess. Terriers were bred to catch the small stuff. (mind you, I think dogs are more likely to bring you what they've caught. Cats don't bring their kills back home most of the time - they don't have the same need for human approval)

[lil_shepherd]

It's more a case of chasing said terrier round and round the garden as he drags the fledgling he has caught from one bush to another. With the cats, it's chasing them round the house.

[kalypso]

Tabitha used to like giving me presents, but has lost interest in collecting them. I don't know whether it's old age or the thyroid pills, but she's got a lot more passive over the past year, and rarely goes out for pleasure unless it's conspicuously sunny.

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

Your assessment of cats is correct. We keep Cleo indoors overnight at nesting season for precisely this reason. If she does find a nest as she has once or twice she will keep going till she empties it. Eating unfledged nestlings is also bad for the cat - too rich or something - makes them sick but it doesn't, unfortunately, stop them doing it.Ironically though, she has brought us more unfledged cuckoos than any other bird...

[watervole.livejournal.com]

"We keep Cleo indoors overnight at nesting season for precisely this reason."

My heartfelt thanks!

(Sadly, we did lose our baby blackbirds about a week after I originally posted this.)

Baby birds

[sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com]

Commiserations - Ours and neighbouring fledglings, both blackbird and starling seem to have made it. Cleo has taken one nestling - probably woodpigeon which was caught early evening and was DOA, and one just-fledged sparrow, which we rescued, and it survived. If you know or suspect whose cat did it, might be worth having a quiet word.Neighbour has bluetits in a box - his cat brought him one early a.m, then responded to him shouting and scolding by bringing the other one to see if it met with a better reception than her first "gift" - both survived.

As a cat owner of long standing, I repeat Watervole's request.If you understand and love them, keep them in at night when birds are nesting!. There seems to be a lot of anti cat feeling in the papers at present and the debate is getting way too emotive at the expense of facts. Studies show cats take more mice than birds overall but nesting is when they get easy runs at birds. I was shocked at a presenter of Springwatch suggesting in the Sun recently that all cats be kept permanently indoors. This patently would not work - they are good at escaping for a start, and the law does give domestic animals the right to "express themselves" which for cats includes hunting - but it doesn't preclude owners taking some responsibility for keeping cats and other wildlife in a state of balance. Scolding them for bringing you prey as a gift isn't understood by them, a food treat and an early "bedtime" established as routine at certain points of the year will be - cats love routine. Cleo now walks upstairs exactly at 10pm every night when she used to go out till 1am!